Note 246 — Chapter XVII

We see enough of this in politics. We see it in the Church as well. Writing as one with nearly a quarter of a century's experience of a disestablished, and therefore of a popularly governed Church, I have seen a great deal of this tendency in ecclesiastical matters. Prominent and ambitious men are ever apt to fall into the snare here noted. The tendency of popular assemblies is ever to develop a class of men who will have but little backbone, and will be always ready to rectify their convictions to suit their constituencies. "Show thou me the way I should walk in," but in a very different sense from the Psalmist's, is the unuttered prayer of their lives, addressed to the popular audiences of whose opinions they are the mere expressions, not the guides. For such men this typical history has many a reproof in St. Paul's brave conduct upon this and every other occasion. He was never afraid of a little temporary misrepresentation, and therefore he proved a real guide to the Church of his own and of every age.